There aren’t too many great days for patient safety in state capitols, where the medical establishment tends to rule the roost through the power of its political giving and tentacles. But Monday was a great day for patient safety in Sacramento, when powerful testimony reminded legislators of the human cost of inaction.

The families of victims of overprescribing spent an hour and half in the Senate and Assembly Business and Professions Committees and presented some of the most compelling testimony ever heard there. Their stories and faces were felt around the Capitol Tuesday from huge photographs on the front pages of the Sacramento Bee and Los Angeles Times to TV news stories echoing legislative sympathy for reform.

The medical establishment  is now on the defensive.  A Medical Board overhaul is in the air. Debate is turning to the government not protecting patients enough.

Will the clarity these courageous families brought to the failure of California’s laws to protect patient safety grow or wither in the coming days?  It’s up to us, but I think it will grow.

Carmen Balber and I asked in an oped in Monday morning’s San Francisco Chronicle whether it wasn’t time to pull the plug on the current physician-run medical board. We wrote:

For decades, the medical board has failed to identify dangerous practice patterns, such as over-prescribing, which should trigger investigation. In fact, the board only acts on complaints by consumers, and then rarely. Once an investigation is begun, it takes years to resolve, too long for patients who may be at imminent risk of harm.

When prosecuted, an enforcement case can stagnate in five layers of review. Sadly, little other deterrence exists to medical negligence.

Those listening to the tragic stories in Sacramento this week could not help but understand the human consequences of such inaction.  Sons, daughters, brothers, uncles lost. Preventable deaths.

All because the California Medical Association and the state medical board it controls won’t agree to a $9 increase in physician license fees — the cost of two cappuccinos — for workers to find overprescribing doctors in a state database. And due to the grip of this medical establishment over our regulators and the legal system — where families who lose nonwage earners to dirty doctors cannot get legal representation due to a 38 year-old cap on their recovery.

We called for these changes in Monday’s Chronicle.

A true overhaul of physician discipline would move complaint investigators into the attorney general’s office to work hand in hand with prosecutors and would create a public-member majority on the medical board.

Real reform should also include mandatory random drug testing of high-risk surgeons and physicians – as is mandated now for bus drivers, college athletes and pilots. Finally, the state’s 38-year-old limits on the rights of injured patients need to be revisited, too. It’s time for the public to take the power back for itself.

It’s Wednesday morning. Eyes are wide open. And we are a lot closer to patients taking power back than we were before.

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Posted by Jamie Court, author of The Progressive’s Guide to Raising Hell and President of Consumer Watchdog, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to providing an effective voice for taxpayers and consumers in an era when special interests dominate public discourse, government and politics. Visit us on Facebook and Twitter.

Says State Attorneys General $7 Million Deal with Google Won’t Stop Company’s Serial Privacy Abuses

The $7 million deal announced today ending a multi-state investigation of the Google Wi-Spy scandal does virtually nothing to thwart the Internet giant’s repeated privacy violations, Consumer Watchdog said.  The public interest group said Google should pay an amount that would affect its profits.

In addition to the $7 million to be divided among the 38 states and the District of Columbia that were involved in the investigation, the settlement deal provides that Google will create an educational campaign that features a YouTube video to teach consumers about protecting privacy on Wi-Fi networks.

“Asking Google to educate consumers about privacy is like asking the fox to teach the chickens how to ensure the security of their coop,” said John M. Simpson, Consumer Watchdog’s Privacy Project director. “The educational video will also drive consumers to the YouTube platform, where Google will just gather more data about them for its digital dossiers.”

Read the settlement with the state attorneys general here.

Google has become a serial privacy violator, Consumer Watchdog said.  In the Wi-Spy case the company sucked up data including such things emails, passwords, and bank account numbers as its Street View cars photographed streets around the world.  Before that the company exposed personal information of it users when it launched its unsuccessful “Buzz” social network.  That privacy breach prompted a consent agreement with the Federal Trade Commission.  No sooner was the ink dry on the settlement, than Google violated it by hacking around the privacy settings on the Safari browser used on iPads, iPhones and other Apple devices.

“This settlement does nothing too stop Google as a serial privacy violator.  The company now has a long history of violating users’ privacy, lying about it, apologizing, promising not to do it again, sometimes making a token penalty payment and then moving on to the next violation,” said Simpson. “The $7 million penalty is pocket change for Google; it’s clear the Internet giant sees fines like this as just the cost of doing business and not a very big cost at that.”

Reports were circulating in the tech press Friday that serial privacy violator Google is about to cut a deal with state attorneys general to close their investigation of the Wi-Spy scandal.

Remember what happened?  Google sent specially equipped cars to travel the highways and byways of the world snapping photos of everything they passed.  What Google did not say was that were also sniffing out Wi-Fi networks and sucking up private data on those networks.

They got passwords, account numbers and email messages, including in France a couple trying to arrange an extramarital affair.

When first confronted, Google executives denied sucking up the data.  Then they said it was all a mistake.  Then they said it was the work of a rouge engineer. Consumer Watchdog was among those to call on the Federal Trade Commission to investigate. The FTC did, but dropped the probe after Google essentially said, we’ll be nice.

The Federal Communication Commission opened a probe ultimately fining Google $25,000 for hindering its investigation.  The FCC also found that the Wi-Fi snooping had been deliberate and that senior managers had been aware of it.  The FCC said it could not determine if the law had been broken because the engineer who designed the Wi-Fi snooping exercised is Fifth Amendment rights and declined to testify.

Google tried to spin the FCC probe by saying the commission found they had not broken the law. That’s not what happened; the FCC said they could not determine if the law had broken. A big difference.

Meanwhile, under the leadership of then Connecticut Attorney Richard Blumenthal, more than 30 state attorneys general launched their investigation of the incident, which is really the largest case of wire tapping in history.

It’s that state attorneys general probe that is reportedly about to be settled for $7 million.  That may sound like a lot, but it’s not even pocket change to the Internet giant, which made $10.7 billion profit on revenues of $50.2 billion in 2012. Divide the fine among the states and it comes out to about $230,000 for each.

I asked Susan Kinsman, spokesperson for Connecticut Attorney General George Jepsen, now heading the investigation, about prospects for a deal.  She said, “I spoke to our attorneys for a status report. As we’ve stated before, the Google investigation is active and ongoing. I can’t comment about any prospect for a settlement.”

Nonetheless, there are enough sourced reports out there, focusing on the $7 million deal that it sounds like it’s accurate.  It was probably leaked on Friday by Google itself. That’s the way they usually play the PR game. By the time the settlement is officially announced it will be old news.

What’s important, by the way, is not the measly $7 million fine.  It’s understanding what’s really happening. Once again it looks like Google, the serial privacy violator, is buying it’s way out of a jam with what for the Internet giant is pocket change.

We’ll need to see what other provisions the settlement contains.  Will the state attorneys general give Google the same sort of pass that the FTC did when it allowed Google to explicitly deny it broke the law in the Safari hacking scandal and charged Google $22.5 million? What will happen to the data Google sucked up? Will there being any meaningful injunctive relief?  Given Google’s record of repeated privacy violations and of bamboozling regulators, I’m not optimistic that much of anything significant will emerge.

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Posted by John M. Simpson. John is a leading voice on technological privacy and stem cell research issues. His investigations this year of Google’s online privacy practices and book publishing agreements triggered intense media scrutiny and federal interest in the online giant’s business practices. His critique of patents on human embryonic stem cells has been key to expanding the ability of American scientists to conduct stem cell research. He has ensured that California’s taxpayer-funded stem cell research will lead to broadly accessible and affordable medicine and not just government-subsidized profiteering. Prior to joining Consumer Watchdog in 2005, he was executive editor of Tribune Media Services International, a syndication company. Before that, he was deputy editor of USA Today and editor of its international edition. Simpson taught journalism a Dublin City University in Ireland, and consulted for The Irish Times and The Gleaner in Jamaica. He served as president of the World Editors Forum. He holds a B.A. in philosophy from Harpur College of SUNY Binghamton and was a Gannett Fellow at the Center for Asian and Pacific Studies at the University of Hawaii. He has an M.A. in Communication Management from USC’s Annenberg School for Communication.

A pro-consumer candidate to the Federal Trade Commission, who had the backing of the entire public interest community, really wanted the job. But this candidate didn’t want allies to go public for fear of alienating the White House. What happened?  Today POTUS hosed us and gave the keys to the FTC to corporate attorney Edith Ramirez.

The lesson: if you want to speak for the public, you have to speak publicly.

It’s just too easy to get caught up in the quagmire of worrying about alienating powerful people. Back channels and back room are the domain of those who want to turn their back on the public, not advocates for the public.

And the lesson, which came in healthy helpings this morning, can even be lost on those of us who typically have no control of our tongues.

Consider Ron Shinkman’s remarkable report today in Payer and Providers about the pathetic record of California Department of Managed Health Care Director Brent Barnhart.  We didn’t expect much from a former Kaiser lawyer Governor Brown appointed to regulate HMOs, but perhaps a healthy tongue lashing on the front end would have up-ended this record.

As Shinkman records:

Between 2009 and 2011, the Department of Managed Health Care issued nearly 1,000 enforcement actions against health plans, fining them nearly $9 million for a variety of misdeeds and demanding they take corrective actions to protect the interests of their enrollees.

But after Aug. 11, 2011, when Gov. Jerry Brown appointed former health plan lawyer and lobbyist Brent A. Barnhart to head the agency, enforcement actions dropped almost immediately. The DMHC issued only 74 such actions during the remainder of the year, compared to 433 in the portion of 2011 prior to his appointment – although an agency official said that number should be condensed.

In 2012, the DMHC issued 90 enforcement actions, well below its historical average dating back more than a decade. The most significant action of the year was taken not against a health plan, but against the Accountable Care IPA, a medical group that had been using non-physicians to make medical coverage determinations.

Moreover, financial penalties levied against the plans dropped dramatically in 2012. Last year, $451,000 in fines were issued, or just over $5,000 per enforcement action. That’s a stark contrast to 2010, when $2.2 million in fines were issued, an average of more than $20,000 per action. In 2008, fines exceeded $18 million, which included several significant enforcement actions against insurers.

New rule, or old rule remembered: When in doubt, speak out.

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Posted by Jamie Court, author of The Progressive’s Guide to Raising Hell and President of Consumer Watchdog, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to providing an effective voice for taxpayers and consumers in an era when special interests dominate public discourse, government and politics. Visit us on Facebook and Twitter.

The power of the petroleum industry in California may be unparalleled in the states. Its lobbying machine is stupendously successful.  For instance, California remains the only significant oil producer that does not tax oil extracted in the state. It has very weak–perhaps the weakest–regulation of oil and gas extraction, particularly hydraulic fracturing of deep deposits, known as “fracking.” State environmental laws are under constant attack.

State Sen. Michael Rubio, a Central Valley Democrat elected to his seat in 2010, was in an ideal spot to show whose side he was on in these fights.

Rubio, who resigned from the Senate Feb. 22 to work for Chevron as its chief California lobbyist, was chair of the Senate Environmental Quality Committee, which oversees oil industry environmental issues. In 2011-12, he was a key Democrat on the Senate’s energy committee.

His most recent official action was an inaction: He was scheduled to co-chair his committee’s hearing on fracking with Sen. Fran Pavley. The hearing took place, airing widespread frustration with the weakness and loopholes of current and proposed state regulation of fracking. Rubio, however, was a no-show.

It’s obvious now that on Feb. 12 he was getting ready to jump ship to Chevron, and likely in no mood to hear citizen fears about water pollution, spoiled land and even fracking-induced earthquakes. But Rubio did, in his short tenure, leave a record that Chevron was surely tracking with admiration.

In hindisght, his biggest moment in the spotlight would have been his months-long campaigning on behalf of a corporate effort to weaken the California Environmental Quality Act. The changes would have particularly benefited the oil, energy and property development industries. The proposals didn’t become law, but they’re not dead yet. Rubio will just be working them from the other side of the fence.

In May 2012, Rubio also cast the deciding “no” vote against a bill (SB 1054) by Sen. Pavley that would have merely required oil companies to notify residents and businesses nearby in advance of fracking activities. The bill, vociferously opposed by the Western States Petroleum Assn. and other oil lobbyists, failed. Industry opponents of the bill recognized Rubio for his role in leading the opposition that killed a bill with wide public support.

Rubio also supported, and may have encouraged, the governor’s firing of two state energy regulators in 2011 after oil lobby complaints about their tightening of oversight.

(Oil and energy weren’t the only supporters he was courting. Rubio also championed the profits of Blue Cross over the pocketbooks of customers. He withheld his vote in 2011 from a measure that would have allowed the state insurance commissioner to reject health insurance rate increases that could not be justified. In the state Legislature, an abstention from voting is effectively a “no” vote, but with no accountability. It’s the coward’s way out. )

Chevron certainly knows what it’s getting with this new top lobbyist.

Rubio stated that he was leaving his elected post two years early to spend more time with his family, including a disabled child. No matter how much that weighed in his decision, the fact remains that his status as a state senator (however briefly) greatly inreased his value to Chevron. His pay will grow by multples. Because there is no law against such a quick trip through the revolving door–from overseeing an industry to lobbying for it–Rubio could be schmoozing his fellow legislators right now, and spreading money to their campaigns. His constituents, meanwhile, are stuck with no representation until a special election that’s perhaps months away.

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Posted by Judy Dugan, former research director for Consumer Watchdog, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to providing an effective voice for taxpayers and consumers in an era when special interests dominate public discourse, government and politics. Visit us on Facebook and Twitter.

Somebody’s listening. We issued Golden Wasteland this morning, a harsh look at  the Department of Toxic Substances Control and how it’s falling down on its job of protecting Californians and the environment from toxic harm.  NBC took a deep look at the Department last night as well — and its director refused to answer direct questions. Well now Sacramento has some of its own.

Senator DeLeon (D-Los Angeles) just wrote DTSC Director Debbie Raphael asking for some answers about its lack of enforcement and its mismanagement of hazard waste regulation. He’s calling for a Senate investigation.

In response to consumer complaints and a class action lawsuit on behalf of HIV/AIDS patients in California, Anthem Blue Cross has agreed to suspend a program that would have barred patients from purchasing certain specialty medications at local pharmacies.  Under the program, patients would have been required to obtain their medications by mail order, threatening their health and privacy according to the lawsuit.

Blue Cross announced the suspension of the mail order program in a letter arriving in consumer’s mailboxes this week.  Download a copy of the letter here.

“The deferment of the mail order program is great news for thousands of Blue Cross customers with HIV/AIDS who were facing risks to their privacy and health,” said Jerry Flanagan, staff attorney for Consumer Watchdog.

The lawsuit, filed last month in San Diego Superior Court by Consumer Watchdog and Whatley Kallas LLC, alleges that the mandatory mail order program illegally targets HIV/AIDS patients. The lawsuit further alleges that due to the complex nature of HIV/AIDS drug regimens, patients rely on their local pharmacists who, working directly with the patients, monitor potentially life-threatening adverse drug interactions, and provide essential advice and counseling that helps HIV/AIDS patients and their families navigate the challenges of living with a chronic and often debilitating condition.  

In addition to the health concerns raised by the change in their continuity of care, HIV/AIDS patients have expressed serious concerns associated with a loss of privacy due to the proposed mail order program. For example, HIV/AIDS specialty medications often need to be delivered in refrigerated containers. Patients who live in apartment buildings or need to have their drugs delivered to their place of employment are concerned that neighbors and co-workers who are not aware of their condition will come to suspect that they are seriously ill.

Under the mail order program announced by Blue Cross in December and slated to go into effect on March 1, 2013, HIV/AIDS patients’ insurance policies would have no longer covered medications purchased at local pharmacies.

The deferment is intended to allow Blue Cross, Consumer Watchdog, and Whatley Kallas LCC time to develop a more consumer friendly program.

“Blue Cross should be commended for listening to the serious and heartfelt concerns of their customers who depend on local pharmacists for their life-saving medications,” said Edith Kallas of Whatley Kallas LLC. “We look forward to working with Blue Cross to ensure its mail order program benefits consumers without unfairly targeting its most vulnerable patients and providing them appropriate opportunities to choose what is best for them.”

Download the lawsuit filed by Consumer Watchdog and Whatley Kallas, LLC here.

It was a relief to hear more than a passing reference to climate change in President Obama’s State of the Union Speech, including promises of more support for wind and solar power. But the oil industry heard nothing to even cause even a smidgen of concern.

Asking Congress to “get together to pursue a bipartisan, market-based solution to climate change” should have been marked in the transcript as a laugh line.  And the presidential promise to “keep cutting red tape and speeding up new oil and gas permits” was an emergency alert for communities under siege from natural gas fracking and states–particularly California–whose dwindling supply of clean water is being sucked away by both oil companies and climate change.

While the president pledged support for “research and technology that helps natural gas burn even cleaner and protects our air and our water,” technology is only as good as the corporations willing to pay for it as well as put safety above profit. What citizens want is information and a say in the process. Right now they have precious little of either.

So the citizen’s challenge to President Obama and Congress has to be this:

• We want knowledge and the oil industry demands secrecy about its drilling, its safety procedures, the toxic chemicals it injects into wells and the effects of drilling on land, water and air.
• We want responsibility and the oil industry wants deniability about chemical and methane seepage (to protect it from liability for the damage it causes, from poisoning our water to killing farm stock after leaks from wastewater ponds like the one pictured above).
• We want advance information about new drilling and the industry wants no discussion with communities before the drill bits hit the soil; dangerous fracking gets far less advance scrutiny than solar and wind projects.
• We want the environmental and quality of life effects of drilling measured and balanced before deep new fracking and injection wells go up next door; the industry calls such requests “job killers.”

President Obama rightly praised the growth of cleaner cars and called for more conservation and greener buildings. He left no wiggle room in his speech for climate-change deniers, not with American coastal communities being submerged by rising seas and ever-more-frequent giant storms like Sandy. Yet that firmness doesn’t track with his praise for clean-burning natural gas. Any clean-air benefit in combustion has to be balanced against the high volumes of methane–which is a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide–in the gas fracking process.

He praised growing North American energy independence–yet such “independence,” in a global market like oil, will do exactly nothing to reduce U.S. gasoline prices. And the worse cost is the acceptance of filthy tar sands oil from Canada, which pollutes at every stage from extraction to refining.

Everything in politics is a tradeoff, and President Obama has at least put energy conservation and climate change back on the national radar. What we need to see now is a commitment to saving our air, land and water for generations to come, rather than accepting the false “job killer” mantra of industry and its empty promises to put safety over profit.

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Posted by Judy Dugan, former research director for Consumer Watchdog, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to providing an effective voice for taxpayers and consumers in an era when special interests dominate public discourse, government and politics. Visit us on Facebook and Twitter.

Leading consumer advocates today called upon the legislature to hold hearings and investigate strong new laws in response to recent Los Angeles Times reports on widespread drug overdoses due to physician overprescribing and the recent case of a convicted methamphetamine-using drug-dealing doctor who will be treating patients again within a year.
 
Consumer Watchdog asked the Governor and legislative leaders in a letter to consider random drug testing of physicians.  The advocates, who have already qualified one initiative measure for the next ballot to regulate health insurance rates, said that voters would not tolerate legislative inaction.

Click here to read the full letter.

The recent Los Angeles Times series, which uncovered 71 physicians whose prescriptions have led to three or more deaths, and the decision Friday by the state medical board to allow Dr. Nathan Kuemmerle to treat patients again after pleading guilty to felony drug dealing, prompted Consumer Watchdog to call for hearings and legislative action.

“The recent investigation and past decades of experience show that patients are not safe from drug using and drug dealing doctors,” wrote Consumer Watchdog’s Jamie Court and Carmen Balber. “One in ten physicians develop problems with drugs or alcohol over the course of their careers, yet continue to practice medicine. These physicians hold the lives of patients in their hands every day.”


”Pilots must undergo mandatory random drug testing because they hold the lives of so many passengers in their hands. Physicians who operate on patients and are in a position to overprescribe or use narcotics themselves should undergo similar mandatory random drug tests,” wrote the advocates. “Patients should not have to fear being treated or operated on by addicted physicians. Unfortunately, there is little deterrence to such malfeasance, as evidenced by the medical board’s restoration of Nathan Kuemmerle’s medical license.”

The letter also urged the Governor and lawmakers to consider moving authority for oversight and prosecution of over-prescribing to the pharmacy board, as is already the case in many states, to data mine information in the state’s prescription drug database to identify problematic prescribing patterns, and to strengthen the doctor disciplinary system and preventive measures to protect patients before they are harmed.

“Prescription drug abuse by physicians is something the public will not tolerate without a remedy that’s reasonable and effective. Though any action to detect and discipline dangerous doctors will undoubtedly bring protestations from the medical establishment, the small minority of physicians that overprescribe and use drugs need to be dealt with quickly and effectively to ensure the safety of California patients. Now is the time to act,” wrote the advocates. “An overhaul of the Medical Board is four decades overdue and necessary to protect patients.”

The news reports were on the gee-whiz side this week as state job safety regulators announced nearly $1 million in fines–the largest ever!– against Chevron for its refinery blaze last August. But “largest ever” only means that the levy hit the state’s $1 million cap on such fines. For Chevron, whose yearly profits are measured in the tens of billions (second only to Exxon), $1 million is pocket lint. As with so much of California’s regulation of mega-businesses, such fines are baked into the cost of doing business. They have zero deterrent effect.

The Cal-OSHA fines were for Chevron’s carelessness and lax oversight at its Richmond. CA refinery–leading to a a burst pipe, a huge fire and a toxic smoke cloud that sickened thousands of residents in and around the Richmond, CA, refinery last August. Chevron also dithered and delayed a shutdown for more than two hours after finding the leak, guaranteeing a conflagration.

The blaze starkly illustrated how the energy industry and other polluters evade regulation and play off one regulator against another. The regulators sit in their little silos of fractured authority, disclaiming responsibility for this disaster or that disaster.

Chevron, as the fine was issued, also listed how it would make the aged Richmond refinery safer in the future. The list is a joke–it promises not one cent in capital spending to upgrade and make safer the parts of the plant that didn’t burn down. All of the promises amount to “we’ll keep a closer eye on things.” Keep in mind as you read that Chevron’s inspections and safety training, before the August fire, were considered state of the art in the industry.

Chevron said it was:

• Enhancing inspections of piping components potentially susceptible to sulfidation corrosion since carbon steel components with low-silicon content can corrode at an accelerated rate. This inspection program is being applied throughout our refinery system worldwide.
• Strengthening reliability programs for piping and equipment, and enhancing competency requirements for leaders, inspectors and engineers.
• Strengthening leak response protocols and reinforcing the authority that everyone has to shut down equipment.
• Creating more management oversight and accountability for process safety and re-emphasizing focus on process safety.

That all sounds like more of the same, vulnerable to the same human error, reluctance to shut down and cost-cutting that led to the August disaster.The badly corroded pipe that burst, for instance, was skipped in a Nov. 2011 inspection of the unit destroyed by the fire. The deliberate omission was in violation of Chevron’s own safety policies.

Chevron will obviously have to replace the pipes (and everything else) in the processing unit that failed. But even that is in question–the new pipes that Chevron insists it will usewill use are the same as the piping that corroded at a BP refinery in Washington State, leading to a similar huge blaze that shut down the refinery. Richmond’s City Council, which has  final say over how Chevron does its repairs, is largely staying out of the dispute between Chevron and the U.S. Chemical Safety Board over the pipe replacements.

Could it be because Chevron spent $1.2 millon on the city’s municipal municipal election last November, putting two of the three candidates it backed onto the council and fighting off progressive candidates? The company is also pouring millions into pet projects for city leaders.

There are endless ways that a company the size of Chevron can spend relative pennies in order to keep all of its billions in profits. Fines make more economic sense than upgrades. Building parks and meddling in local elections is cheaper than protecting the overall health and safety of local citizens. Spending more millions on state officials and elections is also cheaper than suffering coordinated official scrutiny.

California’s governor and Legislature could easily improve both safety and consumer protection with some reasonable changes:

• Put oversight and regulation of oil refineries under a single independent body, funded through a tax on oil extraction.
• Give the regulator the power and funding to inspect refineries regularly and follow up frequently to ensure that violations are fixed.
• Require refineries to stagger routine maintenance shutdowns in order to prevent spikes in gasoline prices, and oversee routine shutdowns to ensure that they are not dragged out for financial reasons.
• Require that refiners keep about three weeks’ worth of gasoline in stock to ease price spikes after events like the Richmond fire. This could include stronger oversight of refiners’ exports outside the U.S.

Sounds pretty simple. But Chevron, Exxon and friends see such regulation as interfering in their freedom to profit. Gov. Jerry Brown could lead the reforms above and probably win with major public backing. It’s all a matter of whether anyone, even Brown, will stand up to the oil industry. Early on, he didn’t show much backbone. But with the economy recovering slowly and the state’s debt looking more manageable, the still-popular Brown could successfully lead the charge to make refiners operate safely and in the public interest.

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Posted by Judy Dugan, research director emeritus for Consumer Watchdog, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to providing an effective voice for taxpayers and consumers in an era when special interests dominate public discourse, government and politics. Visit us on Facebook and Twitter.